jockey club stand-by-u caregivers community support project: in-home respite for caregivers of older adults

Conditions: Caregiver Burnout; Caregiver Wellbeing

Summary: the goal of this study is to investigate whether the in-home respite service model is effective in relieving caregiver's burden and improving their mental wellbeing. caregivers are triaged into four levels of needs using a self-developed screening tool. those screened as mild and moderate levels are admitted to the study, while those in low or high-needs levels are referred to other services. caregivers admitted in this study will receive either 12 or 36 hours of in-home respite services as the intervention. trained volunteers or substitute caregivers will visit their home to take care the older adults, providing several hours of free time for the caregivers. assessments are conducted before and immediate after the intervention, and 3, 6, 12 months after the completion of intervention, to measure the changes in mental wellbeing of the caregivers. a control group with no respite service provided is recruited to compare the effects in the changes of mental wellbeing.

all participants will provide informed consent at the time of enrolment. both caregivers and their care recipients will complete assessment before the respite service period. care recipients are assessed for their self-dependent ability in daily activities and their physical health condition. caregivers are screened for their overall needs level using a self-developed multidimensional screening tool. those screened as high needs level will be referred professional services. those screened as low will be recommended to join centre-based services. caregivers who are in mild or moderate needs levels will be admitted to this project. they are also assessed using standard tests for measuring changes in mental health (using depression anxiety stress scales - short form (dass-21)), caregiving burden (using chinese version of the zarit caregiver burden interview) and quality of life (using eq-5d-5l). as the intervention, caregivers in mild-needs level will receive 12 hours of in-home respite service, whereas those in moderate-level will receive 36 hours of service. volunteer or substitute caregivers will provide in-home elderly-sitting service so that the caregivers can have some private time for themselves. at the end of the intervention, caregivers and care recipients will complete the assessment again to measure the changes of their physical and mental health. all participants will be contacted again for follow-up assessment 3, 6 and 12 months after the completion of intervention. a control group with no respite service provided is recruited to compare the effects in the changes of mental wellbeing. they are contacted 3, 6 and 12 months after baseline measurement.

Eligibility criteria:
caregivers and control group inclusion criteria: * aged 18 or above * provide care to at least one homebound older adult (aged 60 or above) * provide no less than 6 hours of caregiving per week * able to communicate in either cantonese, mandarin or english exclusion criteria: * care recipient is receiving long-term care service

Keywords: caregiver caregiving burden caregiver wellbeing